Various systems have been developed for automated transmission of documents or other information over the public telephone lines to the facsimile machine of an information requestor. For examples of such systems, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,910,765; 4,893,333; 4,918,722; 4,864,254; 5,068,888; and 5,072,309. By using a facsimile-based information service, a user can virtually instantaneously obtain a hard copy of a document from, for example, a library or other central information source, thus avoiding the delays attendant with mail services or the expenses involved in personal delivery.
Because of the time advantages inherent in facsimile transmission of information, it has become virtually a standard of doing business. However, there are a number of problems associated with delivering requested information or documents from a central information source which must be overcome for such schemes to become practical and widespread. For example, the person requesting the information must be identified in some fashion. Obviously, this can be done by verbal communication over the phone, or assigning each user an identification number which is inputted via touch tone phone. However, this requires each user to keep track of the identification number, and makes routing of information to anyone else difficult.
Another problem associated with facsimile retrieval of information from a central data source is the expense of conducting such exchange via the public telephone network. If the central data base, for example, is in Washington, D.C. and the requestor is in California, the long distance charges for transmission of a document of any size can be prohibitively expensive.
Another complication that must be dealt with by any efficient system is the necessity for billing charges incurred by the user. Of course, any facsimile information system must include means for identifying the information requestor (a telephone number, tax number, an established account number, et cetera) but, again, accounting personnel will be needed to correlate the charges for a particular facsimile transmission with the requestor, establish a charge for the service, and bill it to the customer. Again, this increases the total cost and inefficiency of the system.
Clearly, it would be desirable to provide a facsimile information system and method which automatically routes information to the correct individual, minimize the cost of long distance telephone service, and automatically calculate a charge and bill it to the customer without the necessity of human intervention.